Posts Tagged ‘Martin Luther King’

No, this isn’t another example of Godwin’s Law. This is a very real instance where the Tories and the Nazis pursue similar legalistic tactics to seize power without a democratic mandate.

Remember back last summer, when one of the comments incorrectly cited by the Israel lobby to support their accusations of anti-Semitism against one of Corbyn’s supporters was a quote from Martin Luther King? The great civil rights leader had said ‘Everything Hitler did was legal’. Historically, MLK was absolutely right. Hitler and Mussolini came to power through the skillful manipulation of their countries’ democratic institutions and their constitution. They were even careful to make sure that the Holocaust – the horrific mass murder of six million Jews – had a legal basis in the German constitution. A few years ago the Beeb staged a drama documentary of the Wannsee Conference, the infamous secret meeting of the Nazi leaders to plan the genocide of the Jewish people in occupied Europe. At one point the drama showed the Nazi party lawyer briefly raising a point against the enactment of the Holocaust. He wasn’t against it for any moral reason. His only objection to it was his concern that it wouldn’t be legal.

Far from being popular revolutions, as they claimed, the Nazis and the Italian Fascists before them were able to seize power through democratic campaigning, and exploiting the political weakness of their right-wing rivals as the various coalitions that had governed Italy and Germany broke down. The governing right-wing parties needed a coalition partner to form a government. And Mussolini in Italy and then Hitler over a decade later were asked to join them in government. The Fascists and Nazis then exploited the political impasse to become the dominant party in these new, rightist coalitions, and then used a series of political crises to ensure that they became the only party following their victory in an election. In the case of Mussolini, the Fascists with the aid of the right wing of the Liberal party altered the Italian constitution so that the whole of Italy became a single electoral district, thus giving them the majority they needed to seize power as the only permitted political party. If the constitution had not been altered, and the separate, individual electoral districts had retained, Mussolini probably wouldn’t have one the election at all. In fact, he was personally embarrassed by the results. In Mussolini’s home town of Pridappa, nobody voted for him or his thugs.

It’s very clear how this situation also applied to Black Americans before the ending of segregation. America is a democratic state, which prides itself on its constitution and democratic institutions. Yet it was also state where Blacks, and other ethnic minorities, such as its indigenous peoples, were marginalised and oppressed through a set of regulations designed to maintain White political and social dominance, a set of regulations that were clearly anti-democratic in that they violated the fundamental democratic principle of equality for everyone under the law, but which nevertheless also claimed a basis in democracy through the support of the majority.

Now it seems Theresa May is also trying to manipulate the British constitution so she can cling to power without a clear electoral mandate. The elections have resulted in a hung parliament. The Conservatives have the largest number of seats in parliament, but lack an overall majority. So May has been desperately trying to form a coalition with the extremely right-wing DUP, a party with connections to Loyalist terror gangs in Ulster, such as the UDA and UVF. And Mike has also reported how she has cancelled next year’s Queen’s Speech, citing the need to maintain a solid government for Brexit, in order to hang on to another two years of power.

I don’t think Brexit is particularly important to May. It certainly isn’t to the great mass of the British people. In a poll, only 15 per cent said it was a priority. However, it is a priority for business, and just about the only issue May has left to campaign on, now that a majority of the British public have shown that they don’t like the promises outlined in the Tory manifesto. The Tories are busily revising this to exclude the most unpopular, such as the Dementia Tax.

Meanwhile, the Tory whips are trying to drum up support for May as this country’s defence against ‘Marxist’ Jeremy Corbyn.

This really is the tactics of the Nazis. The Nazis and the Italian Fascists were crisis regimes. That is, they claimed their mandate to rule through a desperate crisis – the threat of Communism – which was facing their countries. In both cases, the threat of a Communist revolution or insurrection was gone when they seized power. Nevertheless, they were adept at exploiting the fear of a Communist uprising amongst the upper and middle classes.

And they exploited their nations’ constitutional provision for government by presidential decree for the duration of the crisis. This had been invoked by Hindenburg, the right-wing German president, in the late 1920s and first years of the ’30s when the coalition between the SDP, Catholic Centre Party and the Liberal parties broke down. It was then adopted by Adolf Hitler, who used it to keep the regime in power.

The German constitution dictated that the state of emergency could only last four years unless it was renewed. And so every four years, Hitler had to call the Reichstag, which was composed solely of members of the Nazi party, to renew the state of national emergency that kept the Nazis in power.

Similar to the way May is using the crisis of negotiations with the EU to extend her term in parliament beyond her actual democratic mandate to govern.

The Tories are now showing that they’re an active threat to democracy in this country. Blair’s New Labour and the Tories and their Lib Dem enablers led by David Cameron and Nick Clegg, passed a series of legislation providing for secret courts. If it is deemed necessary for reasons of national emergency, a person may be tried in secret, with the evidence against him kept from both him-or herself and his/her lawyer. The accused may also not be told the identity of their accuser.

It is exactly the type of legal system that was set up in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia.

And now May is also seeking to manipulate the British constitution, so she can secure a few more years of rule without the support of the British electorate.

This is another step towards authoritarianism and dictatorship, in which parliament only becomes a rubber stamp, or indeed a democratic façade, for an antidemocratic administration.

This has to be stopped. Now.
May either forms a workable coalition government. If she cannot do so within the next few weeks, then there should be absolutely no question of calling another election.

One of the points made by Jewish supporters of the Palestinians is that there at more Christian than Jewish Zionists in America. Indeed, Prof. Norman Finkelstein has pointed out that support for Israel amongst Jewish Americans was marginal until the late 1960s, when Conservative activists worked hard to engineer support for the country after its victories against the surrounding Arab nations. Mike made a similar point in his defence of himself and his commenter, Paul Mabbo, against the accusations of anti-Semitism flung by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Not everyone making the accusations was necessarily Jewish.

In fact there has been an alliance between right-wing American Christian groups and militant Zionists since before the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980s. Reagan’s election was partly due to his support from these right-wing Christian groups, brought about by the fundraisers and PR men Richard Viguerie, Terry Dolan, Howard Phillips and Ed McAteer. These men founded, led or advised a slew of conservative Christian organisations such as Conservative Caucus, Religious Roundtable, National Conservative Political Action Committee, Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Christian Voice, Young Americans for Freedom and the Moral Majority. The term ‘Moral Majority’ was coined by either Weyrich or Phillips when McAteer arranged for them to meet Jerry Falwell. McAteer was then the head of the Christian Freedom Foundation, which was funded by money from the Pew and DeVos families, who owned Sunoco and AmWay respectively. It isn’t surprising that Betsy DeVos has now popped up as Trump’s Education Secretary, with a militant right-wing plan to privatise all American public schools into Charter Schools with an explicitly right-wing Christian curriculum. Weyrich was also a member of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which was financed by money from the Coors and Richard Scaiffe. As well as being a member of Young Americans for Freedom, Phillips had also been a minor member of Nixon’s administration. They chose Falwell because he had helped Anita Bryant defeat the Dade County Gays Rights Bill in 1977.

Falwell was one of the most notorious of the right-wing televangelists of the 1980s. He was actually the least popular of them, became the most influential through his contacts with Ronald Reagan. He first came to public attention for his 1965 speech denouncing Martin Luther King. However, it was the series of rallies he conducted in 1976 and ’77 which brought him to the attention of the leaders of the American Christian right. In 1983 Reagan allowed Fallwell to attend National Security briefings on the possibility of nuclear war with Russia, and discussed theology and nuclear war with him in his presidential limousine. Fallwell was also active establishing links with the Israeli leadership to the point where he became the most influential gentile lobbyist for Israel and Israeli expansionism.

As part of this, Falwell began arranging tours to the Holy Land. One of these was attended by a journalist, Grace Halsell, in 1983. She noted the prominent role apocalypticism played in the tours, with many of her fellow tourists believing that Christ’s return, and the end of the world were imminent. These tours also had an explicit agenda in drumming up support for Israel. The Israeli guide referred to Palestinians as Arabs, following the official Israeli line set by Golda Meir that there were no Palestinians. He then went on to state that the ‘Arabs’ preferred to live in poverty, had repeatedly refused Israeli friendship and bluntly stated that ‘all Muslims were terrorists’. When the tour bus stopped at Nazareth, it was only to use the toilets there. Halsell suspected that they were being prevented from speaking to any Palestinians or Christians living in Israel. This is not unlikely. One of the ministers at our church said that if you go to Israel, you will be kept from meeting Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians. The tour finally met Falwell at a hotel in Jerusalem, where they were treated to a speech by the Israeli defence minister, Moshe Arens, boast about Israeli victories in the invasion of Lebanon.

Falwell was richly rewarded by the Israelis for his services to them. A forest was named after him, he was showered with free trips to the country, and was also given a private jet by the Israeli government. He became the only gentile to receive the Jabotinsky medal, named after the Zionist leader, who advocated waging a war of extermination against the Palestinians in order to set up an Israeli empire that straddled both sides of the Jordan. It was Falwell who turned Jesse Helms, another prominent Reaganite, from a militant anti-Zionist into an enthusiastic supporter of Israel.

Falwell also visited the West Bank, where he had his photo taken with a Jewish American family, who had recently immigrated there. He set up a convention in Annapolis in 1983 to organise support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. This was attended by James Watt and Richard Allen, two members of Reagan’s administration; Yehuda Hellman and other Jewish leaders; Viguerie, Phillips and Weyrich; and former presidential sleazebag Richard M. Nixon. Falwell also told a Texan newspaper that same year that Israel had a divine mandate, through the covenant between the Lord and the patriarch Abraham, to parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan, and that the whole of Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait should also belong to Israel. This would have to be achieved through force. Falwell stated that ‘good intentions are acts of stupidity’.

Extremist American Christian groups have also given support to Jewish terrorists, such as Gush Emunim, who have attempted to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem in order to restore Solomon’s Temple, whose site they believe the mosque occupies. In 1984 18 members of the terrorist group were convicted of trying to blow up the mosque, with the covert support of the Shin Bet and other members of the Israeli army and police. The group also attacked three Palestinian mayor, wounding them.

The terrorists were received as popular heroes in Israel, including by the judge who sentenced them. There were pleas for mercy from Yitzhak Shamir, and American right-wing Christians and Jews began sending money to finance their defence. Wealth American Jews also fund Gush Emunim and Meir Kahane’s extreme right-wing Kach party. Gush Emunim is also funded by Marcus Katz, a Mexican arms salesman, who made immense profits from selling guns and other armaments to Iran and various South American countries. Ruben Mattus, the head of the ice cream firm Haagen-Dazs, is one of the major backers of Kahane’s Kach party in Israel and his Jewish Defence League in the US.

The foremost Christian supporter of Israeli terrorism, at least in the 1980s, was the Jerusalem Temple Foundation, headed by the self-declared new Nehemiah, Terry Reisenhoover. Reisenhoover’s an Oklahoma speculator in oil and land, and styles himself after the Biblical Nehemiah, who was the first governor of Jerusalem after the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon. The land Reisenhoover has speculated on, along with his Israeli partner, Shony Braun, includes land taken from Palestinians on the West Bank. Reisenhoover appointed as secretary Stanley Goldfoot, once implicated in the Stern gang’s 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem Temple Foundation aimed to raise $100 million annually to rebuild the Temple and establish a yeshiva to teach the future priests the correct way to sacrifice animals there. They also supplied funds to Gush Emunim’s defence lawyers after the 1983 attack.

Another right-wing Christian group funding Israeli terrorism is the International Christian Embassy, who lobbied their governments to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This group were also financed by South Africa.

I think my political views and biases have made an impression on the search engines on YouTube, as these came up in the ‘recommended’ and ‘you may also like’ bars. Not that I mind – they’re classic, American working class folk and jazz. The machines decided that I might like Woody Guthrie’s Tear the Fascist Down, and All You Fascists Bound to Lose, as well as Mr. Hitler by the Blues/Jazz legend Huddie William Leadbetter, or Leadbelly.

Here’s Tear the Fascist Down

All You Fascists Bound to Lose

Mr. Hitler

It’s a bitter fact of history that at the time Leadbelly was singing this, Blacks were still very much treated as second class citizens with Segregation in the south. Still, he was absolutely right to lampoon and attack Hitler. I also think that popular music had a strong role in bringing Blacks and Whites together to challenge racism. The Nazis hated Jazz. They regarded it as ‘Negro music’, whose raw sexuality was corrosive of White culture and would corrupt virtuous White youth. But it and Blues very swiftly became popular amongst Whites as well as Blacks, and produced numerous ‘White Negroes’ like ‘Mezz’ Mezzrow, who not only listened to Black music, but were highly sympathetic to the people and their sufferings, which produced it. And the same thing happened later when Rock ‘n’ Roll emerged from the fusion of Black barrelhouse Jazz and White Country music. A few years ago I was watching a rock documentary, which mentioned Little Richard. One of the speakers was a Black musician, who remembered how the crowd at dance halls were divided before Little Richard came along. The floor of the dance hall was clustered with Black people dancing, while the Whites tended to cluster around the edges. ‘White spectators, we called ’em’, he recalled. Then when Little Richard came along, the Whites joined the Blacks on the dancefloor. ‘And so we had integration before Dr. Luther King’, the muso concluded.

Absolutely. And the very best popular has been entertaining, uplifting and drawing people together ever since.

In my last post, I talked about how contemporary scholars were re-examining MLK’s life and political thought to show that far from being a moderate, Dr Luther King was a radical who opposed not just racism, but the capitalist exploitation of the poor, the Developing World and the Vietnam War. These aspects of the man have been airbrushed out of his to make him more palatable to the right-wing mainstream.

In this video from The Young Turks’ ‘Aggressive Progressives’, Jimmy Dore, Steve Oh and Malcolm Fleschner discuss a recent article by Zaid Jilani in the Intercept, in which he tears apart what Dr Cornel West has called ‘the santaclausification’ of MLK. In one of his speeches, Dr Luther King refuted the lie that America was built on the Puritan values of hard work. He said

“Again, we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of Black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both Black and White, both here and abroad.”

Steve Oh talks about how Cenk Uygur, himself and others go on trips during MLK weekend. One trip they made was to Charleston, South Carolina. This was the richest city in America in 1850, and its economy was built on slavery – through slave produced cotton, rice farming and the sale of human beings. He makes the point that although chattel slavery has vanished from America, it is in a sense still with us in the form of the economic slavery, which now affects all poor Americans. He mentions one of the White people they interviewed, who talked about the destruction of his community by the anti-working class, anti-welfare policies and the elite. These policies affect Blacks and Latinos disproportionately, but all poor Americans, regardless of their colour, are suffering.

Oh makes the point that while King now is seen as a consensus builder and fighter for racial justice in the Segregated South, he was a radical like Malcolm X, although his approach differed from the other Civil Rights leader. He talks about how MLK’s teachings were beautiful, and for all Americans, and how he spent the last year of his life, before his assassination in 1968 battling against the Democratic party. Other Civil Rights leaders had warned King not to alienate the Democrats with his condemnation of the Vietnam War. MLK responded to this by giving a speech at Riverside Church in New York City, in which he denounced the American government as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, the napalm bombing of cities and its support for the puppet government in South Vietnam. He called for a complete re-examination of American foreign policy, including the capitalist exploitation of the Developing World.

Dore makes the point that the same problems affect American radicals now. Bernie Sanders is also fighting for economic justice for the American working man and woman. But he’s also being opposed by a corporate, Democrat elite, who want to privatise schools, parks, education and definitely the healthcare system, as the state system is so much better.

There’s much more that could be said here. I know many people, who don’t like MLK because they see him as being too much of an ‘Uncle Tom’. This presents the opposite view, and with luck should help encourage more people to rediscover MLK’s legacy of radicalism and anti-capitalist protest.

I think this month over in the US is Black History Month, which is when teachers, historians and educationalists try to bring to mainstream attention the numerous Black figures, who have contributed to the shaping of modern America. Trump went on TV to announce it this week, and paid tribute to great figures of the Abolitionist and Civil Rights movement Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. However, he didn’t seem to know quite who Douglass was. He described him as someone, who has done great work, and is increasingly being recognised. Which makes it sound as though Drumpf thought he was an historian of the Black contribution to America. Douglass wasn’t. He was one of the major figures of the 19th century Abolitionist movement. His autobiography is one of the classics of Abolitionist and Black American literature. One of his most controversial and inspiring speeches was ‘What To The Slave Is the Fourth of July?’, in which he pointed out how hollow and meaningless the rhetoric surrounding Independence Day, with its talk of resisting tyrants and slavery, for America’s Black people, who were still held in servitude.

In this clip from The Young Turks, John Iadarola and Ana Kasparian discuss Trump’s apparent ignorance. They give him due credit for recognising the contribution of the above Black leaders, and the millions of other Black people in business and politics, which Trump also mentions. They make the point that his apparent ignorance shows the need for Black History Month, as Douglass was an obscure figure until Black scholars rediscovered him. They take issue with the opposition some people have to the Month. Some object to it on the grounds that a separate period for Black history shouldn’t be necessary, and historically marginalised figures like Tubman, Parks, Douglass, MLK et al should be incorporated in general history. They don’t dispute this. They do attack the claim that there simply shouldn’t be Black history month, or there should also be a White History Month, on the grounds that White history is taught every year, throughout the year, from January to December. And they point out too that teaching Black history is necessary, as some schools in very right-wing states have deliberately removed Black leaders and figures like MLK from the curriculum, in order to teach right-wing political figures like Phyllis Schlafly. In an earlier video, The Young Turks reported, if I recall correctly, how the schoolboard in Arizona had stopped teaching the pupils there about slavery, and replaced that part of the school curriculum with Reagan’s speeches. Which very much bears out their point. As for Phyllis Schlafly, she was a Conservative activist, who was anti-feminist and very much anti-UN.

Trump in his speech also takes the time to correct the rumour that he does not treasure the bust of Martin Luther King and had it removed from his office. This, he says, is wrong. He states that it is his most treasured object. This is interesting, as it shows how MLK has been ‘whitewashed’ so that even a Conservative like Trump can approve of him. Those, who’ve studied MLK and his work have pointed out that the man was much more radical than is commonly recognised. He’s seen now simply as standing up for Black equality and racial reconciliation between White and Black. Which is true. But he also bitterly hated capitalism for its exploitation of the poor, whether Black or White, denounced the US’ attacks on Cuba and was very firmly opposed to the Vietnam War, for exactly the same reasons Mohammed Ali did. I dare say Trump would have been shocked to know any of that. It definitely wouldn’t have made MLK one of his favourite Black leaders, as the great man would have despised everything that Drumpf, and indeed recent American presidents, including Obama, stand for regarding the bombing and wars in the Middle East.

Trump also pays due to tribute to his Black staff members and co-workers, especially for taking him into areas, he didn’t know anything about and had not visited before. Iadarola and Kasparian give Trump credit for not going on about the problems of Black inner city ghettoes, which is the prism through which Drumpf usually views the Black community. They also note at one point, Trump characteristically turns it around so that he is, once again, talking about himself and his campaigning, rather than the issue at hand.

If you’re interested in following up Frederick Douglass’ life and work, his autobiography most certainly has been republished. I think it’s in print both individually, as a part of anthologies of American slave writings. There are very many history of slavery and the slave trade. One that’s particularly useful for American history is Harry Harmer’s, The Longman Companion to Slavery, Emancipation and Civil Rights (Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd 2002). This has separate chapters on slavery in different regions and periods, such as in South America, North America and so on. It also presents the most important points as bulleted facts, and as its title says, continues the story into the Civil Rights period.

It seems that freedom of the press is under attack all around the world. Erdogan, the wannabe Ottoman Sultan of Turkey, has made himself notorious for jailing anyone, journalist or not, who dares criticise him. John Kampfner, in his book, Freedom for Sale, describes the clampdown on press and media freedom across the world, in Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Dubai and Russia. And now America. In this piece from Secular Talk, Kyle Kulinski comments on a Vice Report about the arrest of a journalist in the US state of Georgia, Mark Thomason, and his lawyer, Russell Stookey, by the chief judge of Pickens County superior Court, Brenda Weaver. Thomason’s the publisher of a small, local newspaper, Fannin Focus. They were arrested on charges of identity fraud and making false statements. Thomason’s real crime was making official requests for public documents on illegally cashed cheques. He and Stookey also issued subpoenas to the court’s banks to get them to provide information on this issue. Weaver claims that Thomason made false statements when filing the official requests, and that he did not ask her permission, when issuing the subpoenas, and so was attempting to steal that information on the banking details. Weaver also stated that she resented Thomason’s weekly attacks on her character in his paper, saying, ‘I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned.’

Kulinski points out that this is indirect violation of the amendments in the Constitution guaranteeing the freedom of the press. He points out that she had the two arrested not for slander or libel, but simply because she didn’t like what he said about her. She is the criminal in this case, who for her attack on one of America’s fundamental freedoms should be jailed instead of the journo and his lawyer.

I know this is an American case, but I’m posting it because, along with the good and noble stuff we’ve had come across the Pond – MLK, Civil Rights, the Freedom of Information Act, and Elvis – our politicians seem determined also to pick up every wretched, degrading idea as well. Like workfare, which first emerged under the Republicans, and was being touted over here by the Conservatives under Thatcher. Mike and the other disability activists have been given the run-around by the DWP when they’ve tried to use in the British Freedom of Information Act to get the info on the number of disabled people, who’ve died after being wrongly declared ‘fit for work’ by Atos and its successor, Maximus. The DWP first of all declared that the requests were frivolous. Then, when this was overturned on appeal, they delayed releasing the information, and waited till almost the very last minute before appealing against the decision, and then, after they were told to release it, they cavilled against the terms of the request, and deliberately misinterpreted them so that they could issue the wrong information.

And then Ian Duncan Smith had the sheer audacity to pretend to break out in tears during an interview with Ian Hislop on Channel 4, to show he genuinely cared about the unemployed. This was after he and his boss, David Cameron, were shown having a jolly old guffaw in parliament when a Labour MP was reading out tales of the hardship the government sanctions had caused. They looked like the Chuckle Brothers, if those stalwarts of British children’s television had made the weird decision to make their characters grotesque old Etonian snobs.

And then the Tories a few months ago held an inquiry on making the terms of the Freedom of Information Act even narrower, so the public would not be able to get access to so much government information. They did so, because they didn’t like the power it gave citizens like Mike and so many other activists to challenge government decisions. Rather than being used for this purpose, the government issued a statement that the information provided under the Act should only be used to understand how a decision was made. In other words, shut up, you proles, and obey.

If Brenda Weaver gets away with this in America, I can see it spreading to this country. You can read in Private Eye’s ‘Rotten Boroughs’ column, week in, week out, reports of how local authorities up and down Britain have tried to imprison ordinary people for daring to criticise them on blogs, in the press and even for notices they’ve put on the windows of their own property. In one particularly hilarious incident down here in the West Country, a parish councillor in Compton Dando went berserk and was trying to have arrested the appalling felon, who stuck a picture of him as Adolf Hitler in the local public call box. The fiend! But I can see the big boys and girls further up the food chain – Cameron, IDS, Jeremy Hunt and now Theresa May, as being equally, if not more eager, to have journalists arrested for spreading the wrong message, if they could. The DWP’s constant delays and appeals under IDS certainly shows that it doesn’t want to co-operate in releasing embarrassing information. And I can see IDS ordering the arrest of journalists under trumped up charges for maligning him, if he could get away with it. This is the man, after all, who turns up in parliament with an armed guard, just in case he’s attacked by a squad of elite ninja disabled people and their careers. This is the man, after all, who has made up lie after lie about himself, having qualifications he does not possess and serving as a major in the army, when he was returned to unit. Probably. Just before he left the DWP he was whining about getting the blame for welfare-to-work, when it was Labour that invented it. Well, so they did, but he could have discontinued it. He didn’t, and so he deserves the condemnation he got. And the probable new leader of the Tories, Theresa May, is an authoritarian, who wants access to everyone’s internet and phone data. Just in case we’re all members of ISIS or paedos.

If this gang of would-be tyrants think they can get away with arresting people for using the Freedom of Information Act, they will.

I was sent this very interesting clip from RT’s Going Underground by Michelle, who included it as a comment on my piece ‘A Very British Coup against the Left’ on the anti-Semitism allegations against various members of the Labour party. In it, Madam Walker describes the context of her comments, and her own family history as a Black woman, whose father was Jewish, and whose partner is also Jewish. This makes the accusation even more vile and grotesque than it was already known to be.

Madam Walker was accused of anti-Semitism, because she described the enslavement of Black Africans during the transatlantic slave trade as a ‘holocaust’. She explains here that she did so in a private conversation on Facebook between two friends, one of whom was Jewish, the other not. They were talking about the movement to boycott goods produced in the Occupied West Bank. One of Walker’s friends stated that they shouldn’t boycott Israel, because of the debt they owed the Jews. Walker states that she asked, ‘What debt?’ as up till then they had been talking about monetary debts. Her friend replied, ‘the Holocaust’. Walker then went on to mention the holocausts experienced by other peoples, such as Black Africans during the Slave Trade, native Americans in the conquest of the New World, and the genocide of Aboriginal Australians.

The accusations of anti-Semitism were made by a group calling itself the Israel Advocacy Movement. It was they, who dug up what was basically a private conversation made in February. They have said that they will do anything and everything to protect Israel’s interests.

She also says that she does not believe that the Labour party is profoundly anti-Semitic, and believes that it has a good record when it comes to challenging racism. The interviewer, Afshid Rattansi then mentions the accusation by the Chief Rabbi that Labour is permeated with anti-Semitism.

Rattansi also asks her about the observation made by the Palestinian ambassador, when he was previously on the programme, about why Jeremy Corbyn, one of the loudest voices for the Palestinians at the UN, has suddenly gone quiet about the issue now he is head of the Labour party. Walker states she cannot answer that, as she is not so important that Corbyn has discussed this issue with her. Nor did she want to comment about one of the other cases, in which a Labour party member had been accused of anti-Semitism.

Rattansi observed to her that these accusations all sounded very McCarthyite. She agreed, and it was particularly true that her mother had been one of the victims of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities. Her mother was a Black Civil Rights activist, and her father was a Russian Jew. They had met on a march organised by Martin Luther King. Because of her activities against segregation, Walker’s mother was hauled before McCarthy’s kangaroo court and asked the notorious question, ‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?’ Walker’s mother was then deported.

Not only is Walker Jewish, but so is her partner. When asked by Rattansi about the problems this must have placed on her family, she states that she doesn’t know quite what has happened, as they haven’t heard from her partner’s family since these allegations are made. This obviously must be a matter of distress and concern to Walker and her partner.

Here’s the video:

There are a number of observations to be made about the allegations in the light of this interview. Firstly, a woman, who is half-Jewish, and whose partner is Jewish is hardly likely to be an anti-Semite. This in itself is grotesque. It’s even more so when you consider that her Jewish father was Russian, and just how severely oppressed they were. Just before the tsar was overthrown there was the notorious Bielis case, in which the tsar was trying to get a Jew prosecuted under the Blood Libel that he had murdered a Christian child to use their blood to make the matzoh bread eaten during Passover. It’s a vile myth, which has caused hundreds of pogroms and violence against the Jews since it first appeared during the Middle Ages. In the 1890s many Russian and eastern European Jews fled to the West because of the terrible pogroms launched against them in the Russian Empire from racist organisations such as the Black Hundreds. As a Russian Jew, it’s highly likely that Walker’s father, his parents or grandparents, had experienced such horrors.

Her comment linking the Holocaust against the Jews with other genocides, including Black slavery, and the extermination of the First Nations of the Americas and Australia, is entirely reasonable. W.E.B. Dubois, the pioneering Black civil rights leader, was the first to make the connection between slavery and the Holocaust after he had gone to Ghana after World War II. it was part of his campaign to begin reparations and call attention to the historic injustices visited on Western Blacks. Paul Stephenson, a Black civil rights leader in Bristol, made the same comment twenty years ago when interviewed by Philippa Gregory about the statue of Edward Colston, a former slaver, on the city centre on local television in Bristol.

It is also part of accepted academic debate into what constitutes ‘genocide’. I can remember going to a seminar on this by someone, who had researched this issue when I was a postgraduate student at Bristol University. They made the same point that there have been other genocides in the past, including a notorious massacre of the Irish by the invading English in the 16th century, that was still intensely controversial in the Emerald Isle two centuries later in the 18th. Other genocides mentioned included those of the Native Americans. The brutal treatment of Aboriginal Aussies does count as a Holocaust, as they were deliberately exterminated as vermin by the invading Europeans. it’s estimated that the Aboriginal population of the continent before the British arrived was 200,000. After the conquest it was half that, 100,000.

Also, mainstream Jewish organisations also accept that the extermination of other ethnic groups are also similar to the Holocaust. They also feel that as Jews their history also obliges them to protect other ethnic groups that are the victims of racial violence. For example, Bernie Farber, the head of the main Canadian Jewish organisation, launched a ‘Shabbat for Darfur’, or religious day of fasting to call attention and to protest against the genocide in Darfur when that was an issue a decade ago.

And there were those on the Zionist and general Right, who hated Farber for it. He was particularly attacked on the website Five Feet of Fury, run by Kathy Shaidle, a former journalist. Shaidle herself I don’t think was Jewish, at least not by religion. She was, however, militantly Zionist, and quoted and supported the various radical Jewish organisations, that argued that Jews should stop looking outward to reach other to other threatened racial groups. Instead, they should concentrate on defending themselves and their own interests. And this was constructed as mainly against Arabs and Islam.

As for the Chief Rabbi, depending on who that is, I don’t have a whole lot of time for them in this regard. I thought the comment about Labour being riddled with anti-Semitism came from Rabbi Julia Neuberger, who I always thought was a Lib Dem. If so, she has her own political bias. If it was Jonathan Sacks, he had his own problems about bigoted comments. A few years ago Jonathan Sacks, the Orthodox Chief Rabbi, got into trouble as he described Reform Jews as ‘enemies of the faith’ – highly partisan and sectarian language, which frightened many people.

Madam Walker’s case shows that this isn’t about anti-Semitism. In fact, I think Walker was partly accused because she said in her conversation that she didn’t think that anti-Semitism was the real issue in racism, but the treatment of Blacks. Ken Livingstone shares the same sentiments, despite the fact that he has also very publicly condemned anti-Semitism in his book, Livingstone’s Labour. This just seems to be a nasty, extremely cynical attempt by the Israel Lobby to smear any opponents of the Israeli’s treatment of the Palestinians. Especially as, during her private Facebook conversation, one of Walker’s friends argued that there were only Palestinians in Israel as refugees during the Arab-Israeli War. Which seems to me to be another piece of Zionist mendacity. Golda Meir started that one in the 1940s when she denied that there were any indigenous Palestinians before Israel was settled.

This isn’t about genuinely defending Jews from real anti-Semites. This is about defending Israel and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in a grotesque distortion of history.

Mike’s put up another worthwhile post over at Vox Political, pointing out that the graphic that got Naz Shah into trouble with accusations of anti-Semitism, was not in fact anything of the sort. It came from a global civil rights site, Redress, and reblogged by Norman Finkelstein. Redress posted it up as a joke, satirising Israeli attempts to have the Palestinians displaced to the other Arab states. Mike records his email conversation with the prof, who pointed out that while people in America are crazy when it comes to Israel, they haven’t lost their sense of humour. He also points out that Bernie Sanders, one of the candidates for the Democratic nomination for the presidential election, is Jewish and had enormous support amongst Arab-Muslims in the Land of the Free. He also wondered what had happened to us in Britain and why we were allowing Labour hacks and the Israel lobby to persecute her, a Muslim Labour MP.

It’s a good point. And I wonder to what extent the ‘British sense of humour’ is a myth, when politics in Britain is becoming increasingly angry, and when so much British history is full of anger and violence. The creation of the British Empire, and the use of extreme force to maintain it, such as against the Mao-Mao in Kenya, is a case in point.

Now I have the impression that Naz Shah posted the graphic as part of a piece on ‘Apartheid Israel’, which included a quotation about the treatment of Blacks in America from that well-known apologist for racial supremacy, Dr Martin Luther King. Now on this, Madam Shah has a point. Life is made very difficult for the Palestinians in Israel through a system of pass laws and physical barriers that simply don’t exist for Jewish Israelis. William Dalrymple describes this system of discrimination in his book, In Xanadu: A Quest (London: Flamingo 1990). This is a travel book about how he attempted to travel from Israel to China and thence Mongolia, following the route used by the great 13th century Venetian explorer, Marco Polo during a summer holiday while at Oxford. In it, he describes a conversation he had drinking tea with an Arab tailor in Acre, who told him about the difficulties he faced as an Arab in Israel.

As we left the Khan al-Afranj we were invited into the shop of an Arab terzi (tailor). There we drank cay and talked about the problems of the Arabs in Acre; then as now, better integrated than most places. Ibn Jubayr remarked on this in the twelfth century while Hamoudi, who exhibited all the vices of the West in one body, is evidence of it today. The terzi was a tall man, unshaven, shambolic and friendly. But when I asked him about his relations with the Jews he was surprisingly eloquent.

‘We live in peace in Acre,’ he said. ‘He the Jew and the Arab are friends. On Saturday nights the Jews come here, play cards, smoke and drink coffee. The people want peace. Only the government does not.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We live here under an undeclared apartheid. It is just like South Africa. For the Jews there is democracy. They have freedom of speech, they can vote for whichever government they like, can go where they like and talk to whom they like. For us it is different. We are here on sufferance. We are called into police stations, if we are heard talking about politics. We are never sure we will get justice in court: if we have a plea against a Jew, then probably we will not. We are not allowed to join the army in case we turn sides. Because of this we cannot get any good jobs; for these you need security clearance. Most of us end up washing dishes or working as manual labourers; if you are luck you can become a garbage collector.’

He laughed and sent a boy off to go and get some more tea.

‘You see this shop? It belonged to my father before 1948, yet now I have to pay rent to the town council for it. If I was a Jew I would be given it, free. The taxes for us are very high. Many of the young – they are very angry. If this was their government they would not mind. But they do not want to pay the tax which will buy the tank which will kill their brother Arabs. It also means we cannot compete with the Jewish shopkeepers. They do not pay rents for their property so they can sell everything cheaper than us. The Israeli government does nothing for our people.’

‘What do you think will happen?’ asked Laura.

‘How do I know? Some Arabs say: this is Palestine we must kick the Jews out. Also there are many Jews who call us dogs, animals. They say: we must clear the land of the Arabs. Both are wrong. We are both human. We both need to live. We must live together.’

The boy turned and handed round the cups. It was mint tea. When he was ready the terzi continued:

‘Every morning I think that there could be peace. When I open the shop up in the morning Jews will drink coffee with me. Sometimes if I have a problem with my telephone, my Jewish friend will say: use mine. Many of them are such lovely people. If only we could live in peace with them and there were no fighting, no killing.’ (pp. 24-5).

The comparison with apartheid South Africa and the segregated US south is particularly close, as in the 1970s Israel became allied with White South Africa. They also collaborated with the US in sending military aid to the South American Fascist states and their death squads.

I also understand that Madam Shah has the support of her local synagogue. Generally speaking, people, regardless of their racial or religious origins, don’t usually give their support to their bitter enemies. Also, when she retweeted the graphic was therefore making a perfectly reasonable point about Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. She should not be falsely accused of anti-Semitism simply because of her views on this issue.

More real Fascism from Donald Trump. In this piece from Secular Talk, Kyle Kulinski discusses a report from Media Matters that Trump has given press passes to his rallies to the White Nationalist radio show The Political Cesspool. The Political Cesspool also boasts that it will soon hold an interview with Donald Trump junior.

Civil Rights groups have attacked The Political Cesspool for its support for anti-Semites, Holocaust-deniers and White Supremacists, like David Duke, a grand wizard of the KKK. The Political Cesspool on its website says that it is a ‘pro-White group’, which seeks to raise the White birth rate above replacement level, denounces racial intermarriage as ‘White genocide’, and declares that ‘slavery is the best thing that happened to African-Americans’. The programme’s host, James Edwards, has declared that MLK’s dream ‘is our nightmare’. Kulinski recounts that they had Joshua Turner, a former Neo-Nazi skinhead on his show. Turner is reformed, and now fights against and helps others to fight Neo-Nazism. Turner said they way White supremacists hook the young and impressionable is by saying they’re not anti-anything, they’re just pro-White.

Kulinski makes the point that you could defend Trump granting press passes to Edwards and his fellow storm troopers on the general grounds of press freedom. Everyone should be able to come to these events and ask questions, even those from the viler end of the political spectrum. But Trump does not support press freedom. One the Young Turks’ reporters, Jordan Cheridan, was bounced from a Trump rally because the guards recognised him, and threw him out. And its happened to others.

Kulinski also points out that Trump retweeted Neo-Nazis twice, because he agreed with the sentiments. He thought the statistic, that Blacks were killing Whites, was true. It’s also obvious from his other policies that Trump is a White Nationalist. He statement that he’ll build a wall with Mexico, repatriate 11-12 million immigrants, despite the fact that many have made a life in America and are productive citizens, his proposed ban on Muslims, his support for torture ‘even if it doesn’t work’, and intention to attack and kill civilians. These should have already convinced people that Trump is a White Supremacist, and this latest news should clinch it.

This is just a reminder that, despite the controversy surrounding his outré views on Mexicans and Muslims, Donald Trump isn’t the only racist by far in the Republican party. Remember the furore a few years ago when it was revealed that one of the party’s leading members, David Dukes, was also senior member of the Klan hierarchy? He was something like Grand Dragon, Wizard or whatever. The scandal was reprised a few years ago when the Louisiana Republicans found someone else in their midst, who was publicly outed as a member of the Invisible Empire of Sheet-wearing Psychopaths. They were going to throw him out, until the local Grand Dragon or whatever stepped in, and announced that he knew a lot more senior Republicans, who were also members of his vile gang. He threatened to reveal publicly just who they were, if they threw his boy out of the Party.

Way back in the 1980s, the Republican governor of Arizona, ‘Ev’ Meacham, cancelled Martin Luther King’s birthday as a paid state holiday. Hunter S. Thompson declared it was a decision that shamed everyone except the American Nazi Party and the Klan. In a piece of probably hyperbole, the great gonzo journalist declared that even George Wallace was embarrassed.

and others are just barking. Way back in the 1980s there was one Republican politico, who adopted a novel approach to crime. In order to dissuade impressionable kids from embarking on a life of villainy, he wanted every teenager to be banged up in gaol for three days on their 18th birthday. Thus chastened, they would return to normal life determined to be model citizens.

That guy was bad, but he wasn’t the worst in that direction. Another politico took it to a whole new level of crazy. That Republican was bonkers, but at least he wasn’t racist. The other fellow was. I was told by an American friend that one of the Republican politicos had decided on a frightening method of tackling crime in the Land of Free. Convinced that most crime was committed by young Black men under thirty, this fine gentleman adopted a strategy that would have delighted the Aryan Nations: he recommended gaoling every Black man from 18 to 30. After they reached the age of maturity, and had got the presumed urge to beat, rob, rape and kill out of their systems, they would be released back into society. If this is true, then it’s an horrific idea to criminalise a whole section of society. It’s amazing that these people ever get elected to anything, let alone congress or the senate.

It also shows that while Donald Trump is a howling racist, there are many others that are almost as bad, if not worse. You just don’t hear about them, as for the most part they’ve kept out of public eye by simply representing the local crazies in their part of America. In this election, they’ve been overshadowed by Trump. But they’re there, nonetheless. And one of the dangers of the Trump campaign is that, even if he doesn’t win, his considerable electoral gains and popularity will embolden them.